Spring has sprung?
We are trying to decide if it is even reasonable to expect that we would have any additional time for another toy (especially up at the cabin in the summer, it sure would be nice). Buying used helps shave a lot of money, and it is a pretty good buyers market right now for a lot of things. Job situations and economy are always a concern, but I think right now, it is probably not a bad thing to be in a little bit of debt if you can continue to respond to short term emergency cash flow needs. Anyway, we are considering a 2006 19' Bayliner 195 Classic Runabout, just to play on the water with the kids. Not that they/we don't have ENOUGH hobbies and diversions, especially with how much the kids have been enjoying riding the motorbikes.

We actually took the plunge and and went ahead and bought it. Not sure what we are going to do with it now...it won't fit in our garage down here...


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- posted by Jeff @ 12:29 PM | 6 comments

 
Snow Mover
Picked up a used 2007 Arctic Cat H1 650 4x4 this last weekend for a reasonable price (it is black). Looked at a couple, and sort of really wanted a polaris sportsman with EFI, but for the price, this should be a pretty good unit. I haven't seen Arctic Cat too much in the ATV business, but this thing is HUGE. with 12" of clearance and over 700lbs, dry, it is almost more like a jeep than a 4-wheeler. It even has a standard Class III 2" hitch for pulling trailers and stuff around. I ordered a 3000lb winch for under $100 off ebay for it, and it came with a spay tank and some other bags and stuff. Hope Sarah likes it and can take it with us riding (she can be the cantina...grin). Looking at what it will cost to put a snow blade on it to move snow as well.


Update:Got a Gorilla 3000lb ATV Winch for it as well off ebay, which I'll use to lift the Warn snow plow blade I also got. And, to top it all off, a dual stage 24" 5.5hp Troy Built Snow thrower. I sure hope it snows...grin.


I also ended up picking up a 2005 Mirage 7x12' enclosed trailer for moving stuff.


And an ultimate snow mover, a used 2006 Polaris 700 RMK 159" that had 150 miles on it.


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- posted by Jeff @ 4:52 PM | 0 comments

 
Happiness...
So, I'm sitting here, drinking some of my own 2.5 year old aged hard apple cider (no...I'm not drunk, and I just poured the glass), listening to some soft "5 star" personally ranked music on my PC, my two boys are helping each other play a video game (actually HELPING, not fighting and saying, "Thank you Riley!" and "Do you see any more bad guys? No. Thanks!"), Sarah is humming and packing and getting presents ready for our trip to see her folks and sister and her family in our brand new GMC Yukon (thank you RIMM and AAPL), and I'm just plain happy. And I realize I've had a very happy life...not just the last 10 years, which have been the happiest, all with Sarah and now the boys, but a VERY HAPPY life.

I know money doesn't MAKE happiness, but we have been very fortunate not to want too much for that (everyone can always use more, but we have had everything we ever needed, thank you mom, dad, and Micron). It is funny how "relative" money is. We write checks and transfer money, buy vehicles worth tens of thousands, and pay mortgages on hundreds of thousands, but until you actually HOLD $5000 in your hands in $50 or $100 bills, it is hard to put it into perspective. I can't even imagine what some of the CEO's of companies do with it all...maybe it all desensitizes you and even makes you more unhappy (grin...at least I can pretend that is the case). They throw around a couple million dollars for BONUS. And corporations throw around a BILLION dollar type figures every quarter (Exxon and Intel routinely post $2-10 BILLION dollar quarterly PROFITS...wow).

I know environment doesn't MAKE you happy, but my environment hasn't been fraught with worry about being shot in the streets by roving bands of militants or government hit squads or my children taken from me (thank you to every single man and woman that has given their lives and a PART of their lives to secure that freedom for me and my children). I know success doesn't MAKE happiness, but we've been blessed with more successes than I can count (most of all, our two boys...thank you Sarah). I also realize that many of you with less may beg to differ on that (it is easy for me to say all of this when I have it). To that I won't argue. I don't think I've endured any significant measure of hardship or sacrifice, compared to many. Each of us probably has to answer that for himself and decide if they have a legitimate complaint in their lot in life. I can't answer that for you. I know at least ONE person that was handed a most undeserved suffering and blame without complaint. Volunteered for it, in fact. To stand in all of our places for ALL of our wrongs, including the imputed original sin that each and every one of us bears, regardless of how "perfect" we may be...

Most of all, I think I know that happiness, at least MY happiness, is a mental attitude and a personal and private relationship with God enabled through His son, Jesus Christ. A basis on something unfaltering and unchanging and not flawed by anything of THIS world, because it is not based on ANYTHING of this world or any one or material possessions (granted, I find myself routinely caught up in all of that too, and it takes sanity checks and rebound to stabilize, rationalize and move forward)... Thank You Col. R.B. Thieme for teaching me all of this. And, appropriately enough, at this time of season, thank you Jesus Christ, for your wonderful sacrifice that you made on the Cross so many years ago, to provide a path for EVERY person to experience your exceeding and eternal grace and happiness.

There are few things that touch that deep emotional response in me that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, or causes goose bumps and a tingle to run up and down your spine. Watching Braveheart in my kilt standing on my couch while Mel Gibson yells "Freeeeeeedom" (grin...I'm kidding...mostly). Hearing Celine Dion sing "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (I know...I'm gay and I listen to Cold Play). Actually HEARING, cognitively, the words in a perfectly produced Shakespeare play with a great red wine (again...gay...I know). Catching the perfect surf wave and riding it in a kayak and then doing a combat roll out. Watching the rain fall from boiling dark clouds in Stanley, ID. Jumping in a 12 foot deep canal filled with drifted snow. Stepping off the plane in Marsh Harbor, Bahamas. Perfectly composed perl script (gay and nerdy). Hitting the perfect set of whoops on my dirt bike and riding as hard and fast as I can, all by myself at Black's Creek until I can't see straight anymore but grinning like a school boy, stopping at the top of the peak and looking at Devil's Hole and the South Fork of the Boise River...wow. Remembering hunting pheasants and ground squirls with my black lab when I was 12, Daffy. My Mom and Dad. Riding Moab Rim on a mountain bike at sunset. Perfectly lighting a computer rendered Lego scene (ultimate nerd, probably not gay...but definatly lucky-to-ever-kiss-a-girl nerdy). Seeing my boys run to me when I come home every day. Knowing that I live in a free country and the sacrifice others have made to guarantee that. Most of all, hearing my beautiful wife tell me she loves me; my best friend. All of these are, responses. Wonderful, but not the BASIS or source.

I hope that all of you can find this happiness and the sanctuary that salvation provides from what is our life in Satan's world. With the Hope that has been granted to every person, unconditionally for them to accept, this world CAN be a most wonderful and beautiful place. I hope to see you all in the eternal after life and compare stories. I'm truly shamed that this is not a bigger part of my daily life.

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- posted by Jeff @ 6:44 PM | 2 comments

 
Cascade Property - Take 2
We continue to look into building a cabin on our property up in Cascade. We would really like to build a very beautiful log home (that just happens to end up being almost 3000 sq-ft by the time you include the finished basement...crap!!!), but the price to build is insane (like over $175/sq-ft, not including a garage, or the property). Now we are looking at what would we be able to get into already built for similar money (and would it be worth just buying that). We found a place that we put an offer on, but we weren't totally in love with it (well, Sarah is, but I still think building on our site would end up with a much nicer view).

Update: Well, we accepted a counter offer from the seller on that place, and it is including a LOT of the furnishings, a gun safe, two snowmobiles and a storage shed.

Below are some pictures of the place we are buying.


Update: We picked up a new 2008 Yukon 4x4 for Sarah (traded in her Honda Odyssey minivan) and for going up to the cabin in the snow.


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- posted by Jeff @ 8:23 PM | 0 comments

 
Quality Entertainment...Matt Nathanson
This has truly been a year in coming and vastly overdue. Sarah and I went to a local winery to listen to Toad the Wet Sproket concert last year. This guy was up on the stage tuning a guitar. To be honest, he had old jeans and a dumpy shirt and I thought he was one of the support guys up there just getting sound checks and stuff. Well, he keeps strumming some short chords, and then stopping, playing with stuff and humming to himself while we all talked and drank wine...but I keep listening, because there are a couple catchy parts and he seems like a really good guitar player.

Finally, he actually starts talking to us. "Hi. How you all doin'". Well, he talked to us. I mean, really talked to us and joked. It was great. And at the end of the show, I kept humming this one tune I had heard (car crash...which at the time he first started singing it, I thought he was saying "I want to feel a cat's a$$", LOL). Anyway, we bought his "Live at the Point" and "Beneath these Fireworks" albums. Quite possibly the best entertainment I've ever gotten for my music dollar. That was a year ago. And now I just wish I could find his "Please" album, so I could buy it for "Hold Me". Matt Nathanson has more songs per album on my "favorites" ranking than any album I've ever had. My wife wants to have his baby, or at least go to another one of his concerts. Grin. Listen to his albums. They grow on you and somehow, I never seem to get tired of them like a lot of albums do.

Just demo'ed a couple songs from Cary Brothers too, who is touring with him right now. I really like his new album. "Who You Are" and "Ride" from the Zach Braff show, "The Last Kiss". Drat...wish I could catch them in concert.

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- posted by Jeff @ 9:07 PM | 0 comments

 
Remote Disk
I've been through my fair share of HDD's and have tried a couple different NAS drive bays. I have always ended up being a little disappointed for various reasons (most of which has been trying to find a dual drive enclosure with gigabit ethernet support and RAID for a reasonable price). I came across the Western Digital World Book II Terabyte drive at Costco today for $344. It was a bit steep, but try finding a Terabyte of SATA twin drive's PLUS an enclosure that supports gigabit ethernet anywhere.

I'm still trying to get a good feel for it. It is only getting about 10% efficiency of the gigabit bandwidth on my computer for some weird reason, and it is taking over 5 hours to copy 83GB of DVD rips...which seems slow. Averaging only 5.3MB/sec, which is about half what a 100 Base ethernet would do (check this reference for a base line of SATA drive read/write speeds as well as memory and nand flash speeds), let alone a gigabit ethernet setup. Something is VERY wrong. Reading online reviews, it seems to indicate similar problems.

Figure about 35MB/sec for R/W access on a SATA-150 drive locally (this can range from 20-50MB/sec depending on where you are on the plattern). Also, figure on about 60-65MB/sec for R/W access on a SATA-300 drive locally (again, depends on where you are at on the plattern). Figure a typical USB flash drive is about 5MB/sec, and 100-Base-T is about 12MB/sec. Figure striped SATA-150 is roughly 70MB/sec. Main memory DDR2 pushes 5-6GB/sec and gigabit ethernet pushes 125MB/sec. Firewire is ~48MB/sec. Raid-0 (striped) SATA-300 is roughly 100MB/sec. Puts things in perspective.

So, I returned the World Book and bought a Dlink DNS-323 NAS storage and put a 500GB Sammy SATA-II drive in it. Even this NAS is handicapped by less than stellar write/read speeds, but at least it is one of the higher performers I could find on Tom's Hardware. Seems like the dedicated chip doing the conversion from the network traffic to the SATA interface is the biggest problem. Hopefully they can improve it with improvements on the firmware, which is running GNU public code that they said is woefully brute force and not very optimized. This new unit is averaging 18.3MB/sec on sustained write transfers (and about 31% utilization of the gigabit ethernet port). About 3x more than the world book.

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- posted by Jeff @ 3:49 PM | 0 comments

 
Digital Picture Frame
I have really been wanting to get a nice digital picture frame for my office to show off all my pictures of my two boys. Seems like the static frames I have grow out of date SO FAST. I got my wife an 8" Pandigital frame with 128MB of internal flash and 800x600 resolution from Costco for Mother's Day. I created a slide show of her and the boys and even played a song in the back ground. She loved it. The frame isn't too bad, but some of the back grounds are very grainy and dithered (you can tell they are NOT doing full 16-bit color). Also, now that we have it, I really would like to power down the display from 10PM to 7AM (not sure why, it just doesn't seem right to have it on all night). I also don't like how far back it tilts when sitting on a desk. I may try to reduce the color depth manually on some of the photos in a better program and then upload them to see if the darker back grounds look less dithered, but initial trials didn't work out too well.

I really want one of the Philips 8" frames. It has a clock feature, auto off setable times, and can even apply sepia effects to the photos (though not randomly, I don't think). When you see it as an 8" frame, it is actually the diagonal. And while Philips calls this an 800x480 display, they say only 640x480 is viewable??? Anyway, this is just a little smaller than a 5x7" photo. I sort of want a 6x8" or 8x10" display for home, but that is getting pretty expensive still.

Now, I also see a Mustek PF-T80R 8" frame that has a piano black finish and features a clock and all sorts of other settings (not sure about the auto-off). It is pretty expensive at $299, though. And it doesn't have WiFi like many other frames up in this price range...

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- posted by Jeff @ 10:11 AM | 2 comments

 
Little Biker
I decided to finally get my 4-1/2 year old a dirt bike. Even though my almost-3 year old is probably going to be the real rider in the family. I got a used 2005 Yamaha PW50 for $750. It has been used pretty hard. I spent the day making some of the dolly-wheel training wheels and tuning it all up. Headset was very loose and the oil needed changing. Also ordered a youth helmet off EBay. Finally got it all cleaned up and ready, and both boys rode it for all of 25.3 seconds. Then they were done with it. Hum...


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- posted by Jeff @ 6:34 PM | 0 comments

 
Dead XBox...just in time.
Well, 2 weeks after my 1 year warranty on my premium XBox 360 expired, it has gotten the dreaded 3 Red Rings of Death. Seems awefully "coinicidental" this is just the day before they are planning to roll out the new "Spring Dashboard" Update. This sucks. I wouldn't mind trying to get upgraded to an "Elite", but I'm guessing they won't let me do that. Plus, I'm guessing I will lose all my save games and stuff if I send it all in (and have to pay $169 for service). This really does suck. I guess I could try getting an "elite" system and then transfer the content to it with the XSATA. But I'm not sure that is working yet for the 120GB drive of the elite.

Update (4/5/2007): Well, just got off the phone with Microsoft XBox Support and it turns out that my XBox warranty is good through December 2007!!! Woot! I may still get an xbox elite and try to xfer the content over to it and then use the repaired XBox as a second system in my computer room. We'll see. I'm sure my wife won't like that idea.

Update (4/5/2007): I have downloaded XBLA content with both MY gamer tag and with my wife's. Everyone with a profile/gamer tag on my current XBox 360 can play that FULL content (my sons and wife can all play stuff I downloaded/paid for from my GT). The problem, as I see it, is if I transfer this content (or even recover my tag onto an elite), then ONLY I will be able to play this content anymore. My wife and sons will not be able to. As I research this, it looks like even my repaired XBox 360 will probably be a refurb and not the same serial number, so I'm equally screwed there too. If that is the case, I'm super pissed off.

Update (4/6/2007): Found an Elite at my local Fred Meyer store (and got a free copy of Fusion Frenzy 2). I also picked up an Xport 360, which allows you to pop your 360 HDD into a base stand that connects to your computer via a USB cable. Well, the dang thing doesn't recognize my HDD (the 20GB or the new 120GB one). So, I'm back to just playing on my old 20GB drive or petitioning MS to give me some points. I'm super upset that my Viva Pinata save game won't transfer...sigh.

Update (5/31/2007): Finally got my repaired XBox back, and after 2 hours on the phone with Microsoft support, trying to explain the situation to them on why my wife and kids couldn't play the content I had purchased (worse, some had been bought by Sarah, so she could play but not me or the kids), and after being transferred to three different people, I finally got to someone that wasn't trying to run me down a "clear cache/HDD" trouble shooting sheet and actually understood the DRM problem. Had to go through and give a list of all the games (twice), they looked them up and finally had a total (jeezus, don't these people have the accounts right there?!?) points. They said they would call back in 5-10 days with information. Right at 10 days later, I have a PAGE full of codes to enter. And damn if they said they couldn't even EMAIL them to me, let alone just credit it to my account. Are you serious?!? This is a flipping joke. So, got 2 codes wrong when I went to enter them and had to call them back (yeah...you know how hard it is to 783 letters correct when the support person barely speaks English...). Finally done, so, I guess...sigh.

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- posted by Jeff @ 9:28 AM | 2 comments

 
Lost...
Lost is, quite simply, the best prime time drama I've seen on network TV in years. The character development is awesome. The writing is great. The suspense and twisted plot development is perfect, and every episode makes me want more. I don't know how they are going to end this, but we are two-thirds of the way through Season 2, and it is awesome. If you haven't been bitten by this bug yet, I would highly encourage you to watch it. I'm still reeling from last night's episode we watched, Season 2 Episode 18 Dave. I picked up most of it WAY before the end, a.l.a. Sixth Sense, but I didn't catch the very end part until about 5 seconds before it happened. Talk about hair standing up on end. I LOVE this show.


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- posted by Jeff @ 5:38 AM | 0 comments